VivaKi Declares Retreat from Centralised Ad Trading

VivaKi, the programmatic ad firm owned by Publicis Groupe, has overseen a significant restructure of its trading business.

CEO Stephan Beringer confirmed the re-assignment of 120 ad traders at his firm, who will now be positioned at individual agencies owned by Publicis.

A spokesperson at the group has told PerformanceIN that no office closures will come from the move and that VivaKi, along with its Audience on Demand platform, will continue to exist.

Commentators have lauded the decision to entrust all programmatic buying to agencies as “massive news”, highlighting benefits in transparency across privacy, pricing and margins. VivaKi has also received praise for moving away from its beginnings as a company offering tailored digital ads at scale on its way to becoming closer to the properties of its owner.

Publicis Groupe currently has over 1300 agencies spread across six regions, specialising in areas such as digital advertising, brand consulting, PR, design, sales and events.

Breaking down silos

Founded in 2008, VivaKi began supporting members of the Publicis family with programmatic ad offerings, served through its Audience on Demand platform.

This saw traders working with clients to deliver ads programmatically across channels such as display, search, social and video. But although a large portion of this work is automated, the members of staff that manually input settings like bid amounts will be re-located to different Publicis agencies.

The French ad giant is looking to make its programmatic division a lot less centralised in the hope of driving better results for the clients involved. Reports suggest that any traders left at VivaKi will work on projects connected to research and training.

Programmatic prowess

A VivaKi representative says the restructure will bring the company's programmatic planning and activation services much closer to media-planning processes.

They added that Publicis now has more programmatic capacity "than ever before" and, thanks to the announcement, will be well-equipped to optimise engagement across various screens and touchpoints.

A decision has been made in light of a huge 12 months for programmatic ad spend, which is set to grow 7.9% in 2015, according to another Publicis-owned property in ROI agency ZenithOptimedia.

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Richard Towey

Richard is a former head of content at PerformanceIN. After many years spent covering developments from the automotive, sports, travel and finance sectors, he eventually turned his full attention to reporting on stories from the fast-evolving world of digital marketing.